"Taking the Fifth," 3/12/17

This puzzle was terrible! I felt very vindicated to see that Rex also thought it was bad, and then also a little ashamed because he said it was easy but we couldn't finish it. :(

Time to finish/time I gave up: 55:11. I really gave up on one letter and guessed on a few more. It was a sorry state of affairs.
When I checked puzzle there were...I want to say four wrong letters? I don't even remember, it was so unfortunate.

Commentary:
I ended up just throwing in the towel on the LEU (Romanian currency)/AUTORACE (500, e.g.) cross. I should have just stuck it out and tried every letter, but I was so exhausted from ODER (Baltic Sea feeder)/POTHERS (Commotions) that I just gave up instead. Are you kidding me with POTHERS??? Also, the reason I have heard of the word HEGIRA is Joni Mitchell's album, which she spells Hejira. So I was already annoyed with that whole box and ready to be done with this stinker.

The theme was a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed HOTCROSSBUNNY (Sweaty, irritable rabbit?) but really, really hated IRRESISTIBLEUIE (Turnaround too tempting to pass up?) Definitely not good enough to make up for the disaster that was the rest of the puzzle.

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• I don't think there was any clue in this puzzle that I liked because of the cluing. Here are some things that were in this puzzle that I like as things:
• Roo, from Winnie the Pooh
• Jai alai (because it reminds me of the exchange from Archer where the guy says he's going to hunt "the most dangerous game," and Archer responds, "Jai alai?")
• Waldo
• Chicken wings
• Geese
• Just kidding, I hate geese. They're loud and messy.
• Sydney Poitier

I'm too young for this $h*t

• Nothing specifically here. Let's just move on to all the other terribleness.

Really?

Here are all the things that were at least questionable if not downright terrible, in addition to the stuff that I listed in the first section,

• STERNA (Chest protectors)
• NAUGHTS (The 2000s, with "the")
• YAW (Go off course)
• ISTH (Panama, e.g.: Abbr.)
• TOLDTO (Shared with, as a story)
• ADEE (Ending with chick)
• INOT (Playing a fifth NFL period, say)
• ULE (Suffix with nod-)
• ITER (Road to the forum, e.g.)
• RELO (Move, informally)--I've complained about this one before and I still don't like it.
• NINON (Curtain fabric)
• Exercitation (EFFORT)--in this case it's the clue word to which I object
• SAWII (2005 horror sequel)
• ABATER (Lessener)
• UTERI (Centers of early development)--see also sterna

Things I learned today:

• I learned this a few months ago--Fisher of fashion has reappeared, and her name is still Eileen. Every week I write down things I've "learned," but I wonder if I will really retain them. Here's one I stored away for good! Probably the least useful.
• Teena Marie also making a reappearance. That's two!
• Tampa is nicknamed "The Big Guava." A cursory read of the Wikipedia article on the subject tells me that there aren't actually guavas in Tampa at all. This is not helping Tampa's image in my mind.
• Sanaa is the capital of Yemen. How has this not come up before?
• "Alo" is a greeting in an unidentified South American language. I'm not sure this counts as learning something.
• Erno is Mr. Rubik's first name. "Erno's cube" didn't take off in marketing I guess.

Times I got to use my French major this week 

• Menthe. It's something that there is a creme of.
• Affaire is the French spelling of the English word affair. Which I think could just as easily have been the answer to Romantic liaison. Even the French part of this puzzle was no fun.

Fritz out!

"It's Elementary," 3/5/17

Happy first Sunday in March, loyal readers! Spring is in the air (sometimes) and the crosswords are fine.

Like, fine, but not great, as far as this week's puzzle.

Time to finish/time I gave up: 1:02:01

Commentary:
Another slow solve for us this week as we split puzzling and baby watching. I also thought this puzzle was pretty hard for two reasons:
1. The theme--which I enjoyed because I am always proud of myself when I remember things from high school chemistry like element symbols--was such that you couldn't really guess the answer until you had a decent number of letters filled in already.
2. A lot of the fill was hard for me...or, as Rex puts, it "dated/stuffy." That section on being too young is going to be a long one this week.

We got particularly stuck in the mid-SW corner around SCION, ILDUCE, LUCKYDOGS, GINSU, ECOLI [this one was troublesome because we had EBOLA for a while] and also in the NE at BABOON, BLOAT [we had BLOOM], BETHEL, ZORRO, ENCORE, etc. Complaints about some of these forthcoming.

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• 65A Existentialist Kirkegaard SOREN As a philosophy wife I am always proud when I know the answer to phil-related questions.
• 75D Modern acronym for "Seize the day!" YOLO!!!! Mostly I like this because it broke open DAGUERREOTYPE for us, but also it made me laugh to yell out yolo.
• 101D Ballet school supporter BARRE. I kept trying to make, like, Ailey...or Medici...or something fit in here so the pun (if we can call it that) amused me once Jamie got it.
• 117D Image on a Wisconsin state quarter COW. Is this a shot from the author about how lame it is to put a cow on your quarter? Or just a statement of fact that I have shaded with my urban elitism?

I'm too young for this $h*t
This week, let me just prepare a list without a bunch of comments so as to keep this a readable length.

• CECIL the sea serpent of old cartoons
• EDSEL the bomb (I take it this means "bomb" for sales) developed in the 1950's
• ENL is presumably short for "enlargement," like an 8 by 10 photo. Haha photo labs, so retro.
• ZORRO rides a horse named Tornado (which I have learned from Wikipedia is usually pronounced "tor-NAH-do," i.e. in Spanish.)
• LILABNER married Daisy Mae in 1952
• The phrase SONNYBOY
• The phrase GALPAL
• GINSU infomercials
• Side note: I am exactly the right age for the Olsen twins. Fun fact: they are 3 days older than I am. And almost as successful.

Really?

• CAPRI is a chocolate-banana cocktail. I'm not much of a liqueur drinker to start with, but this sounds vile. (The "really?" in this case pertains to the existence of the drink, not the cluing per se.)
• Now hear this! SOUND. Like...a sound is something you could now hear? Or "Sound!" like an interjection that means "now hear this"? (Sound! We will be having Kraft macaroni and cheese for dinner!) I am missing the boat on this one.
• "That's great!" GOODY. I think the last person that said "goody" was Shirley Temple.
• Seaman's chapel BETHEL. This definition is not on the first page of Google results, therefore it's not real.
• Think piece? IDEA. This is lame and doesn't merit a ? clue as if it were cute.
• It's time to retire the word "muff" from non-slang usage. Too awkward. [If you, dear reader, are too old for this reference, just trust me.]

Things I learned today:

• TNOTE is...something about finance...yawn.
• NUN is a letter on a dreidel. I need to learn my Hebrew alphabet better if I'm ever going to be a true crossword expert.
• A PEWEE is a bird. Also, flycatchers are a type of bird. I learned both of these things at once. (My theory prior to googling was that this was "pee-wee" baseball and the kids were fly (ball) catchers. Cute, right? No? Allie, you're ridiculous? Ok.)
• The capital of Togo is LOME.
• KPMG hires CPAs, so I guess this is also something about finance. Zzzzzz.

Times I got to use my French major this week 

• DAGUERREOTYPE is French in origin, je crois.
• SARTRE wrote "I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating." That guy was always a barrel of laughs.
• Quatre halved is DEUX.

Fritz out!

"Mixed Feelings," 2/26/17

Jamie and I alternated jobs this morning: one person plays with the baby, one person solves/reads out crossword clues, then switch when the baby watcher gets bored. [Usually we do the crossword while the baby naps, but we are sleep training him right now and his naps tend to be short and filled with crying.] So our solve time is slow since we were down to one brain at a time instead of two, and it was less fun solving by myself. Everyone should be so lucky to have a solving partner spouse!

Time to finish/time I gave up: 44:06

Commentary:
I thought the theme was fun because I like anagrams. It took us a long time to figure out what was going on though--we had TINYAXEATTACK (Assault involving a hatchet?) and STRUTWORTHY (Fashionable enough for a runway model?) done before understanding the anagram piece.

A lot of the clues this week were pretty straightforward/boring. I don't have a lot to write about (especially since I didn't even do approximately half of the puzzle, Jamie did), but here goes nothing.

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• Of the themers, I especially like CURBYOURSUNATHEISM ("Stop insisting Ra doesn't exist!")
• 13D Character resembling a hat CARET This made no sense to me for a while but once I understood it I liked it.
• Just gonna leave this here...MOMJEANS

I'm too young for this $h*t

• Charo. I'm vaguely familiar with her name. Check out this description from her official website:
• "Only a few people in show business are recognized by just one name. Only a few people bring a smile to everyone’s face when that name is mentioned. Only a few deserve to be called 'multi-talented.' Charo is one of those few."

Really?

• "Bohemian Rhapsody" strikes again! I think it was two weeks ago that I admitted I don't like this song. If it keeps coming up in crosswords I'm going to have to learn it better I guess.
• Aleatory means depending on the throw of a dice or on chance; random. I could put this under "things I learned today," but since neither Jamie nor I have heard of this word I have decided it's too obscure for crosswords. 
• I recommend this Wikipedia article, it's pretty interesting: Aleatoric music

Things I learned today:

• Jean-Paul Marat was a French revolutionary dude who died in a bathtub. I am amused by his Wikipedia entry's organization, which contains the following heading/subheading combination:
• 6. Death
• 6.1 Memory in the Revolution
• 6.2 Skin disease
• 6.3 Tub
• I'm unfamiliar with the word "noodge." The internet leads me to believe it's sort of Yiddish. Do people say this?
• Gil Scott-Heron is a spoken word poet/musician. The New Yorker website informs me that he is the godfather of rap. Jamie informs me that he is sampled on Kanye West's "Who Will Survive in America?"
• Adding to the list of cities I haven't been to in Ohio yet, DAYTON, which I learned is home to the National Aviation Hall of Fame. Makes sense, what with this being the Birthplace of Aviation.
• Yall know that North Carolina is first in flight though, right??? 

Times I got to use my French major this week 

• Not a lot of French in this week's puzzle. What we had was history and geography, which we already know I'm bad at. We did get Spanish (ORO) and Italian (DIO) though, huzzah Romance languages.

Fritz out!

"Uh-Oh!" 2/19/17

Uh-oh indeed. This one was a doozy for me. I found most of it challenging but doable, but one part stumped me.

Time to finish/time I gave up: 1:39:20. Although to be fair probably 20-30 minutes of that was time I was not solving but just looking at things I wanted to write about in this post, which I did while I pondered how to finish this demon puzzle.
Did I check puzzle? Yes. How many letters were wrong? Just the one. See below.

Here's where I was when I threw in the towel:

You can see I have a lot of pencil going on here. It took me a long time to get this far. I was sure that FEEDER was right, and pretty sure about STENO, and therefore ESC. The rest was dicey. 

I was so close at this point. But I thought to myself, there can't possibly be 59 King Charleses, it must be 19. So I was questioning which letter(s) were wrong, and checked puzzle. It was only the X, so I disbelievingly tried "LUDED" (not a thing) and then "DUDED" before the magic music played. Duded up? Please comment here if you have ever said this. I'm bitter.

It was not until after I wrote a paragraph here bemoaning how there could not possibly be over 500 King Charleses that I read Rex and found out that it's the word "dix," meaning ten. I'm so ashamed! French major, you have failed me! Or have I failed you? Zut alors encore.

Commentary:
I did enjoy this week's theme, especially "stoned silence" (33A What one might sit in at a Cheech and Chong movie)* and "no goats, no glory!" (46A Herder's mantra?) *despite the fact that I have never seen a Cheech and Chong movie, I still thought it was a funny pun. Rex has seen it all before and was not amused, but that's the benefit of being a newcomer. I picked out the ones I liked before reading his column so at least we agree on what the good puns are. His column is downright scathing and pretty funny.

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• I like getting started off with JABBA (1A Blob-like Star Wars character) crossed with JANKY (1D Of poor quality, in modern slang.) I do say janky sometimes, like a modern woman, but I could see people not liking this clue.
• 69D Hiking group, with "the"? FED. Haha wonk joke.

I'm too young for this $h*t

• Raul Julia is an actor who, according to IMDb, is best known for the Addams Family movies, which I haven't seen. He died when I was 8.
• Also, I definitely googled "Julia Raul" since the clue is Julia of Hollywood and I foolishly assumed Julia was the first name. This clue is kind of cute because wouldn't it seem to point to Julia Roberts, megastar of the modern era? However, the answer was only 4 letters, and I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be RBTS, but you never know on Sundays.
• Julia Ribbits would be a great name for a pet frog.
• 37A "Puppy Love" singer, 1960. ANKA Just a reminder that 1960 is 57 years ago. I do actually sort of know this song (I feel like maybe from Full House? Can anyone back me up here? Or maybe just my dad? Dad, do you sing this?) but I honestly don't really know who Paul Anka is besides Lorelei's dog on Gilmore Girls. (Yes, I know that Lorelei named him after the real person.)
• I'm too old for this one: 48A Virtual cat or dog, maybe NEOPET. What happened to Tamagotchis? That's what I'm talking about. 90s KID FOR LIFE.

Really?

• 28A "Rats!" AWHECK Faithful readers know how I feel about these sayings clues. This one particularly suffers from looking like it says "a wheck" in my mind (speech-impaired way of saying "a wreck" perhaps?) Or maybe just one word "awheck," which would mean something like off-balance, e.g., "That frame looks awheck; can you tilt it to the left a little?"
• 50A Glaciate ICEUP What? I don't know where to start with this one. Let's just move on.
• 54A In a pretentious manner ARTILY. I think a lot of us who do the NYT crossword know a lot about pretentious people, yet I don't hear this word getting thrown around often. Doesn't work for me.
• I feel like ATAPRICE and TOTHEMAX right next to each other (72/73D) is bad fill. Am I coming up in the crossworld (see what I did there) if I have opinions like this?

Things I learned today:

• There's a college in Maine called Bates. Go Bobcats!
• Burma's first prime minister was named U Nu. How has this not come up before in the ~13 weeks of my crossword life?
• Contrast with its nextdoor neighbor in this puzzle LEI (Something about Hawaii*) (*not the actual clue) which I think has been in every puzzle so far.
• A dory is a fishing boat. Seems a little cruel that Pixar named one of its most beloved characters after its predator.
• Another word for arroyo is wash.
• Another word for wash is dry creek bed. If the clue had been "dry creek bed," I still would not have known to put either of these words. I learned a lot from this clue.
• Another gap in my Spanish knowledge--"nenes" means kids. I thought this would be ninos (sorry, putting accents in Blogger is too much work, but you know what I mean) and second-guessed myself a lot on this section.
• The MiG is a Cold War plane. I think we are all starting to understand that I have a blind spot about military stuff..and vehicles...and history.

Times I got to use my French major this week NONE BECAUSE I AM A FAILURE

Fritz out!

Dispatch from the front, 2/19/17

I'M STUCK. It's been 58 minutes and I feel pretty good about all of the puzzle except I cannot finish the SE corner. WHO IS THE MOTHER OF ARTEMIS? Don't really tell me, that's cheating.

"Do The Splits," 2/12/17

We came perilously close to a DNF on this one. I didn't like this puzzle, and I thought it was hard, so it wasn't much fun for me. Rex's column is quite cheery by comparison!

Time to finish/time I gave up: 47:17

Commentary:
At about 35 minutes we were still missing most of the bottom of the puzzle. It was looking grim. We took a break for several hours and came back to it with fresh eyes and more caffeine, and cracked it eventually.

I agree with Rex that FATALATTRACTION is kind of mean, and JUSTICEFORALL doesn't make much sense. Let's move on to some more specific complaints.

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• I did like BRAINWAVES (55A Result of a serious wardrobe malfunction at the beach).
• 8 and 34D Longtime public radio host IRAGLASS. Talk about knowing your audience.

I'm too young for this $h*t

• Quo Vadis is a 1951 American epic film made by MGM in Technicolor.

Really?

• I don't like NUB for 83A Gist. Neither did Rex. It didn't help that we had "rattles" instead of NETTLES for 83D Annoys for a long time, which crosses on the N.
• This was also caught up in our error with 69D "Grand Hotel" star, 1932, where we had GA___ and went with Gable. Instead of Garbo, which crosses on the B. B is for Blah.
• 91A What's right in front of the tee? ESS. Not only are alphabet clues stupid, saying "the tee" makes this whole thing really awkward. S ('ess,' ugh) is in front of T, not "the tee." If there is some Boston mass transit thing going on here that I don't know about, I'll forgive it.
• ABBA again? (101A "Waterloo" band) I've already learned like 2 ABBA songs from writing this blog, and that was 2 more ABBA songs than I needed in my life.
• 5D "What's the ___?" DIF. NOOOOO, wrong, no one says this and even if they did it would be DIFF.
• Here's a word to the wise: don't Google the word PEENS. Trust me.

Things I learned today:

• The Organization of American States, or the OAS or OEA, is a continental organization founded on 30 April 1948, for the purposes of regional solidarity and cooperation among its member states. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, the OAS's members are the 35 independent states of the Americas.
• Also, it only gets 3.1 out of a possible 5 stars on Google.
• Does anyone else confuse the words "turbid" and "turgid"?
• Diane Arbus was an American photographer and writer noted for photographs of marginalized people—dwarfs, giants, transgender people, nudists, circus performers—and others whose normality was perceived by the general populace as ugly or surreal.
• We had a conversation about whether this was going to be DIANE or DUANE. Glad it turned out to be a female photographer!
• Fu Manchu is a "villain in comics" (although apparently the "comics" part is debatable).
• Also, the Fu Manchu is a category of competition in the World Beard and Moustache Championships. This is an event I would like to attend.
• Tam o' shanters are those Scottish hat things. The ones that bagpipe players wear. With kilts. Now I have exhausted my Scotland knowledge.
• The first hit on Google for Tam O' Shanter is location-based--not only is there a Tam O'Shanter golf course in Canton, OH, there's also "Sylvania Tam-O-Shanter" in Sylvania, OH, which is apparently an ice skating rink?
• Dava Sobel is a writer. I can see her appearing again in a crossword in my future.

Times I got to use my French major this week

• If I had learned more French history I guess I would have known Rene Coty, but zut alors, I didn't.

Fritz out!

"First Ladies," 2/5/17

YALL. Jamie and I successfully completed the Saturday puzzle yesterday. I didn't have time to blog about it, but I wanted to brag anyway. (One note in case anyone else did it--we got realllly stuck on that one that was "work-related" something and the answer ended up being COMPANIONPIECE. We had completed the whole puzzle but had COMPANYONPIECE, which obviously is not a thing, but we really thought "company" was right and it took a long time to sort that out.)

Anyway, today is a new day. Onward!

Time to finish/time I gave up: 31:27

Commentary:
Hooray for celebrating pioneering women! This puzzle was made much easier by the fact that none of the "first ladies" were obscure, so we filled in both the theme answer (BREAKTHEGLASSCEILING) and all of the examples before doing anything else in this puzzle. Nice way to start! Also felt like kind of a cop-out? But we needed the help on some of the other parts, so I was glad for the leg up. I thought the physical aspect of breaking up the top line clue/"ceiling" was also cute. Confession: I had written this whole post and complained about a couple of the "ceiling" clues not making a ton of sense before I realized that they all also go with the word "glass." That's downright impressive! [Second confession: I didn't even realize this on my own, I was reading the constructor's notes in the NYT blog post about the puzzle.] Luckily, my ignorance didn't hamper our solving strategy.

Fun puzzle! But as always, I have some complaints. :D Let's start with a new section though:

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• 61A Part of a stock exchange MOO

I'm too young for this $h*t

• Sidney Poitier's 1980 autobiography? I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Poitier (shout-out to my mom, who met him once and got him to say "They call me Mr. Tibbs" !!!) but don't know about his 37-year-old autobiography.
• If you just became alarmed that 1980 was 37 years ago, join the club.
• I don't know who Sheena Easton is. Is this a failing of my musical taste or my age?
• 1941 chart-topper "Maria Elena." Lol 1941.

Really?

• I dislike the answer "IT help." Partly because I'm not convinced that is a phrase, and partly because I can't stop seeing "it help," a non-verb-agreeing sentence.
• I get irritated by lots of "saying" answers. They seem like too much of a blank check for weird phrases that are convenient fill. I know there are going to be a few every week, but this week was excessive:
• ITSOK
• NONETAKEN
• DIDIWIN
• IAGREE
• IMEANNO (I made a face at this one)
• ILOSE
• ISPOSE (audible pshh at this one)
• OHGEEZ
• YOUIDIOT
• IMSLEEPY
• 60A Running behind LATISH. Rhymes with radish.
• Can we really say that "tree rat" is slang? I do like making fun of squirrels, though.
• 108A Remove fat from, as a soup DEGREASE. Ew. Also, I think the use of soup as the example points more toward something like "skim."
• If you need this to fit in the puzzle, just put SKIIIIIM.

Things I learned today:

• The pieces of mosaics are called TESSERAE. All this word makes me think of is, "there is such a thing as a tesseract," a quote from A Wrinkle In Time. 
• Raise your hand if you're excited for the 2018 movie version directed by Ava DuVernay! Look at this cast list!
• Flexagons are little paper model thingies. Wikipedia notes that one type of flexagon is called a hexahexaflexagon, and includes this excellent sentence: "Note that the word hexaflexagons (with no prefixes) can sometimes refer to an ordinary hexahexaflexagon." NOTED, THANKS.
• We got totally stuck on the cross that Jim, guest poster on Rex Parker, complains about. Make sure you check out his video of "Iseult crossing the Negev"--get it? Crossing? Cute. Ended up guessing at the vowel until we got it right.
• Guido Reni painted "Massacre of the Innocents"
• I was glad to find out that Guido was actually his name, not just a clue that he was Italian.
• Speaking of casual racism, isn't GYP offensive?

Times I got to use my French major this week

• 24A They're measured by pluviometers RAINS. Pleuvoir = to rain.
• I dunno about the noun "rains" though.
• I bless the rains down in Africa!
• Cheesy song confession: I don't like "Bohemian Rhapsody" (of 96D ISEEA) but I do like "Africa."

Fritz out!